English Dub Review: Dragon Ball Super “Hunt the Poaching Ring! Goku and Android 17’s Joint Struggle!”

It’s time to kick ass and save animals.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Android 17’s animal preserve is under attack by an alien spaceship that abducts a whole bunch of the island’s animals, including the Minotaurus, which is the last of its kind. Goku and 17 engage in the pursuit of the poachers and infiltrate their spaceship to get the animals back.

The two of them dish out the hurt on the array of alien mooks inside the ship. The two of them get through the ship with ease and come face to face with their leader. The poacher boss is no match for 17 and Goku, but in a desperation move, he threatens to blow up the ship with all of the animals if the two of them continue their attack. Goku isn’t having that, though, and uses his instant transmission to transport the three of them to King Kai’s planet, just like he did with the cell when he was about to self-destruct back in the day. It turns out the poacher didn’t even have an explosive device anyways, as it was only a conveniently timed birthday streamer device that he had and used to fool Goku and Android 17.

With the poachers defeated and the animals saved, Android 17 accepts Goku’s offer to participate in the tournament, having found some respect for the Saiyan and his willingness to help others.

Our Take:

This week was a total smackdown for Goku and Android 17, who manage to breeze through this episode like there’s nothing to it. Because of that, this is an episode that’s good for character development between Android 17 and Goku, but is bad for entertainment value, since there isn’t a whole lot of tension to keep the audience invested. Any viewer of DBZ or Dragon Ball Super immediately knows that Goku and 17 are completely out of the league of these poachers.

Some attempt is made to try and keep the episode interesting by having the poacher boss threaten the cute little animals that 17 is trying to save, but its a pretty thin plot device that doesn’t yield too much of importance. By the end of it, its just played off for laughs. Admittedly, I liked the callback to the Cell Saga that the joke played with, though. Dragon Ball Super is self-aware, and in an iconic series like Dragon Ball, that’s not a bad thing at all.

I really enjoy how they’ve nuanced Android 17’s character to be a bit more interesting than he was back in the Cell saga. He’s had a complete 180 from what the psychopathic killer that he used to be, now is much more concerned with saving a life than destroying it for fun. In that way, these last two episodes represent a strong thematic turn for the character. He’s still the strong, silent type, but has grown enough to find that a life of virtue and heroism is better than one of destruction and death. I’m looking forward to seeing how the series goes once he ends up fighting side by side with Android 18. The two will certainly be a sight to behold, tearing up whatever opponents are thrown at them.

I think this is the kind of episode that would be much better when binging on the series to catch up with it once it’s already completed, but as a weekly episode, it just falls a bit short. It still retains the consistent animation quality, design and storytelling strength that accompanies every episode of Dragon Ball Super. Just don’t go expecting too much this week, we are still a few episodes away from getting to the really good bits. Right now the story is stuck in a lot of builds up, but its build-up that will no doubt yield in the upcoming tournament.

Score
7/10